DirectXTK now does audio as well as graphics

Originally posted to Shawn Hargreaves Blog on MSDN, Thursday, January 9, 2014

While I’ve been distracted working on the next version of Windows Phone, Chuck has been busy adding features to the DirectX Tool Kit.  New in the Dec 24th release:

• DirectXTK for Audio
• Xbox One platform support
• MakeSpriteFont tool updated with more progress feedback when capturing large fonts
• Minor updates for .SDKMESH Model loader
• Fixed bug in .CMO Model loader when handling multiple textures
• Improved debugging output

The new audio functionality is implemented as a helper layer on top of XAudio2, and provides an easy-to-use API similar to the XNA SoundEffect class.  XAudio2 is like Direct3D in that it is powerful and efficient but not exactly easy to get started with.  DirectXTK aims to help with this by making the common, simple things as easy as possible, but without hiding the underlying API so you can always drop down to the lower level when you need more detailed control.

The audio features are documented here.

Enjoy, and thank you Chuck!